For Asta Funding Inc’s (NASDAQ:ASFI) shareholders, and also potential investors in the stock, understanding how the stock’s risk and return characteristics can impact your portfolio is important. ASFI is exposed to market-wide risk, which arises from investing in the stock market. This risk reflects changes in economic and political factors that affects all stocks, and is measured by its beta. Different characteristics of a stock expose it to various levels of market risk, and the market as a whole represents a beta value of one. A stock with a beta greater than one is considered more sensitive to market-wide shocks compared to a stock that trades below the value of one.
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An interpretation of ASFI’s beta
Asta Funding’s beta of 0.44 indicates that the company is less volatile relative to the diversified market portfolio. This means the stock is more defensive against the ups and downs of a stock market, moving by less than the entire market index in times of change. ASFI’s beta indicates it is a stock that investors may find valuable if they want to reduce the overall market risk exposure of their stock portfolio.
Does ASFI’s size and industry impact the expected beta?
With a market cap of US$24.84M, ASFI falls within the small-cap spectrum of stocks, which are found to experience higher relative risk compared to larger companies. In addition to size, ASFI also operates in the consumer finance industry, which has commonly demonstrated strong reactions to market-wide shocks. Therefore, investors may expect high beta associated with small companies, as well as those operating in the consumer finance industry, relative to those more well-established firms in a more defensive industry. It seems as though there is an inconsistency in risks portrayed by ASFI’s size and industry relative to its actual beta value. A potential driver of this variance can be a fundamental factor, which we will take a look at next.
Is ASFI’s cost structure indicative of a high beta?
During times of economic downturn, low demand may cause companies to readjust production of their goods and services. It is more difficult for companies to lower their cost, if the majority of these costs are generated by fixed assets. Therefore, this is a type of risk which is associated with higher beta. I test ASFI’s ratio of fixed assets to total assets in order to determine how high the risk is associated with this type of constraint. Given that fixed assets make up an insignificant portion of total assets, ASFI doesn’t rely heavily upon these expensive, inflexible assets to run its business during downturns. Thus, we can expect ASFI to be more stable in the face of market movements, relative to its peers of similar size but with a higher portion of fixed assets on their books. This is consistent with is current beta value which also indicates low volatility.